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FEATURE

DESCRIPTION

KEY FEATURES

Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning "humanity to others". A distribution f(o)unded by Mark Shuttleworth and sponsored by Canonical Ltd. is currently one of the most popular GNU/Linux flavors.

Includes some proprietary drivers. Non-free components (like proprietary WiFi drivers or graphics drivers) have been present in Ubuntu since the very beginning. The idea is to provide non-free drivers only in case that free drivers do not exist or are of significantly of lower quality.

INSTALLATION

Installer - overall

(8) Since Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake), a graphical installer has been available with the Live-CD edition. The installer is fast and asks a small number of questions. It's one of the easiest Linux distributions to set up for a newbie user. Ubuntu's alternative text-based installer is based on the Debian Sarge installer. It adds a few new screens in expert mode, and removes a few in novice mode, making it even simpler to install the system with default setting. The defaults are: latest Gnome with a selection of GTK software.

Package selection

(2) Not available. You can however install additional packages before running the Live-CD installer (graphically or using apt-get). Every package you install before running the main installer will appear in your final installation.

Predefined package groups

(2) Desktop or server installations are available. No package group selection.

Expert mode install

(8) Expert/Beginner and kernel 2.4/2.6 choices.

Graphical installer

(6) Available since Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake). The older text (dialog-based) installer is also very simple and suitable for most cases as well.

Installer speed

(6) The Live-CD installation is pretty fast. The installer only asks a few questions and then copies the entire Live-CD image to the disk, configuring the hardware and the boot-up menu. The legacy (alternative) installation process is rather slow. Default installation took 35 minutes on 1.6Ghz, 1GB RAM laptop. On the same machine, Yoper took 13 minutes.

CONFIGURATION

Graphical system management

(5) Ubuntu does not provide a disto-specific Control Panel (like in SuSE or Mandriva). Still, a few Ubuntu-specific tools has been added to the default Gnome desktop: the update notifier, update and installation manager (similar to Windows' Add/Remove Software applications), an applet to mount disks, a NetworkManager for wifi support, Beagle Search integration and more.

(8) Except for base Ubuntu packages (built and supported by the Ubuntu team), there are official but unsupported repositories: universe and multiverse. It all sums up to over 10,000 of Ubuntu specific packages. Using alternative sources from Debian or its derivatives is not recommended (and usually not useful).

Package management, automatic dependency resolving

(8) Dpkg, APT and aptitude - Debian package management tools are among the leading GNU/Linux tools for software management. Installing software in Ubuntu is simple and troubleless, and certainly much more pleasurable than in most distributions using the RPM format. Only Smart package manager is considered superior to APT (however, it can be used in Ubuntu as well).

Graphical package management tools

(8) Synaptic - a graphical frontend to APT - a software installation and update tool, very useful if someone likes to click rather than type. Also, an "Add/Remove applications" program is delivered, which is much simpler and more straightforward than Synaptic, but allows to install only the most typical desktop applications.

PERFORMANCE

System boot-up speed

(6) Thoughtful services selection and default configuration make Ubuntu boot usually a bit faster than Debian. It's getting better with each release, but there is still some room for improvement.

System responsiveness

(7) Fair responsiveness of the system. Working with Ubuntu seems faster than with the default Debian installation, but not as fast as with one of the performance-optimized systems like PLD, KateOS or Zenwalk. Technically, packages (except for the kernel and libc) are compiled for 486, but with Pentium III (or higher) optimizations.

STABILITY/SECURITY

Popularity

(9) Ubuntu got extremely popular during the previous year and places currently takes the first place in the DistroWatch rank. The creators claim that it has over 8 million users.

Security focus

(8) All of the key security packages (including kernel packages) are being updated on a daily basis, so if you update the system frequently, you should not have to worry about security much.

Stability and maturity

(7) Ubuntu is based on Debian, which is one of the most stable and mature distributions available. Still, Ubuntu comes with fresh software and instabilities may occur. Kubuntu on the other hand is considered a bit worse in terms of stability since recent versions of KDE usually break more often that fresh GNOME.

INTERNATIONALIZATION

Does the installer support multiple languages?

(8) Ubuntu installer is translated into 40 languages which makes it one of the leaders in this area. Internationalization is one of the Ubuntu project priorities.

Is the system localized after installation?

(7) The installed system is localized. The only problems may occur with QT-based applications. QtConfig app can fix this problem when installed.

Is manual system localization easy?

(5) If something does not work, we should make friends with dpkg-reconfigure tool which makes it easier to change the package configuration without the need to mess up with the configuration files.

APPLICATIONS/NETWORK

Support for restricted formats

(5) Ubuntu used to be a community distribution devoted to the Free Software thing, so it has almost no support for non-free formats is available by default. Recently the approach is changing to a less restrictive one. You can install all the non-free packages from the multiverse repository (no officially supported but hosted at ubuntu.com). The Restricted Formats wiki entry describes the Ubuntu policy and the multiple ways of getting support for non-free packages. Using EasyUbuntu — a graphical non-free software installer is another good option here.

Sagem DSL modem support

(6) Eagle-USB has been available as a Debian package since version 4.11 (Warty Warthhog). Unfortunately, the support for Thompson modems got worse and worse with every release. Now, it's not possible to install the modem without kernel recompilation.

Alcatel DSL modem support

(6) Speedtouch modem installation is not fully automatic. Package "speedtouch" is responsible for firmware loading. Still, we have to copy the driver manually. Manual configuration is also a must.

ISDN support

(4) As in Debian, proper modules and applications are in the repository.

Wireless support

(8) System automatically detects the common supported wireless cards and looks for the wireless connections using NetworkManager (adequate icon appears on the desktop appears if WiFi is available). Of course, standard Debian tools for dealing with wireless cards are also available, so is Ndiswrapper for Windows-only cards.

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